Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Black and White in Color

(Noirs et Blancs en couleur, Ivory Coast, France, 1976)

This was the first feature film for Jean-Jacques Annaud, who went on to be a notable director. It was filmed entirely in Africa, in the very places where the almost true story happened. Certain details were changed for dramatic and comic purposes.

It is 1915, in French Colonial Africa. Back then the Frenchies controlled massive parts of the continent, including the Cote d’Ivoire. ... Read more »

The Maltese Falcon

(1941)

It was a lot of fun to see this, probably the greatest hardboiled detective movie of all time, right after seeing the original version, also released as Dangerous Female. In my review of that one, I mentioned the static camera, the noisy sound track, and the old-fashioned silent movie acting. Watching this one now, I realized that the most important thing the ... Read more »

The Maltese Falcon

(Dangerous Female, 1931)

First I’ll make a confession. I am a big fan of mystery novels, including the classic hard-boiled ones from the ‘30s and ‘40s. I think Raymond Chandler is one of the great American writers. But I am not a fan of Dashiell Hammett. It’s not that he couldn’t spin a good tale (this is a very good one), I just don’t much like his style of writing. That’s just me. Most mystery fans adore him. ... Read more »

How to Steal a Million

(1966)

A medium-good entry in a genre I really love: the heist movie. Audrey Hepburn is the daughter of one of my favorite character actors, Hugh Griffith, who played the ribald Squire Western in Tom Jones. Papa is an art forger who has done very well for himself and Audrey, selling phony masterpieces to gullible billionaires. But hubris has caught up with him. He has ... Read more »

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (Second review)

(1972)

We just watched one of the revisionist westerns of the early ‘70s, The Culpepper Cattle Company, which we liked. This one came out in the same year and is even better. It is the fact-based story of the last robbery attempted by the James-Younger gang. Jesse and his brother Frank went on to make more robberies (or as Jesse called them, “guerilla raids”) but it was ... Read more »

The Culpepper Cattle Company

(Australia: Dust, Sweat, and Gunpowder, 1972)

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s we began to see something called “revisionist westerns.” That is, many of the familiar tropes of traditional westerns, which were largely bullshit, were abandoned in favor of a more realistic depiction of what the Wild West was really like. So the saloons are not brightly lighted, populated with gorgeous girls, with a tinkling piano playing. They are ... Read more »

Charlotte’s Web

(USA, Germany, Australia, 2006)

I think I ought to start off here with phobias. There are a lot of people who simply could not watch this film. Most of the farm animals are real, with only their mouths altered to look like they are speaking. But Templeton the rat and Charlotte herself are animated and very real. My mother could not possibly endure the rat. She can’t stand to look at rats, mice, gerbils, hamsters … ... Read more »

Nell

(1994)

Idioglossia was a stage play, and is the name for an odd phenomenon that happens mainly between identical twins. They sometimes develop their own private language. These things can be amazingly complex. They have their own names for themselves and other people, and objects, too. It usually disappears around the age of puberty.

Jodie Foster is Nell, who ... Read more »

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

(Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, Italy, 1971)

“Garden?” I’d say that’s a slight understatement. Just a bit bigger and it could have issued its own postage stamps, like Monaco. I wouldn’t go for a hike in that garden without a compass and a good supply of emergency food. You could easily get lost and never be found again.

The F-Cs are a wealthy family in Ferrara. You might call them aristocrats except for the fact that they are ... Read more »

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

(Москва слезам не верит, USSR, 1980)

I wondered what the title was all about. It seems it was a taken from a line in a Russian song. Like, things will work out for the better. And in this sweet little movie, they mostly do. Not totally, but when does that ever happen?

Katya, Lyudmilla, and Tanya are roommates in a dismal little “workers dormitory” in 1958. They are all from the country. Katya works in a machine shop, ... Read more »